the previous post asked for working examples... it's difficult to cut out brief parts

Though it may be difficult, it's a good training exercise for you in learning Perl.
The act of creating a small cut-down program should help
you focus on and better understand the problem;
you may even find you're able to identify the
problem and fix it yourself.

Thank you for the feedback and document references!I'm going to continue to read the Lincoln Stein Book, will check out the Best Practices book as well. I have read the Suffering from Buffering! A good read, indeed :).